“This dark ages judgement and misplaced outrage should be replaced with information and compassion.”

I agree. It’s so horrific and takes me back to Andrea Yates who drowned her 5 children. Though much different from psychosis, I had postpartum depression after our first child was born. It was what I’d call mild but difficult. This must be beyond challenging for the jury with people looking at it all so differently. Regarding Andrea Yates, I believe she’s in a psychiatric facility somewhere. I’m guessing Lindsay Clancy could end up that way.🤷‍♀️ I can’t help wondering how women who’ve done something like this deal with it once the depression or psychosis is gone.

Does anyone remember Susan Smith who pushed her car into a lake with her two little boys inside it in their car seats? That seemed like a different situation. She was married, having an affair and her kids were in the way. It’s all impossible to imagine and beyond disturbing.

Toxic Empathy does not help her. It's fine to think you can comprehend what she MAY have had going on...there's no diagnosis remember. But to think she should not pay for these senseless deaths is dangerous at the least.

I don't know what to think - we get a lot of the trial on our Boston area news channels and I have a difficult time listening to it. I believe postpartum depression is real, but I avoided pregnancy my whole reproductive life so I have no experience with it. I had a brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia who really disliked the way his meds made him feel and he eventually committed suicide. So mental health issues and medications can have sad outcomes. That I've witnessed.

I’m so sorry about your brother, Seagrass.

Thanks for sharing the video, Petalique. She had reached out for help so many times. Her healthcare providers were negligent, that’s for sure. And regardless of the jury’s ruling, she will be living in hell the rest of her life.

The condition of toxic empathy doesn’t even apply to this case. What an odd thing to say.

“But to think she should not pay for these senseless deaths is dangerous at the least.“

She’s going to pay one way or another. As I posted, it could be the same route Andrea Yates took.

Seagrass, I’m so very sorry. Yes, terribly sad outcomes. You likely have a better understanding than most people.

Seagrass....I'm so sorry about your brother.

This cannot keep happening. If they can ask you at the doctor if anyone is harming you at home, or educators have to turn in abuse they see, then it seems like we can do the same thing for women after they've given childbirth. She asked for help in so many ways! She needs to be the reason that the system changes, and this never happens anymore.

I don't believe in the death penalty. God is the ultimate judge, not us, and it is irreversible if you get the wrong person.

That said, I wouldn't even give her life in prison. She did everything she could to avoid anything bad happening. She herself was hurt. It's obvious she tried. Who should be held accountable? Her husband, the hospital, her, her community... Anyone around who should have been listening. These are certainly mitigating circumstances for her sentencing.

I do know if a person here, who has struggled to report her daughter to CPS. It came to a head about a month or two ago. And she did. Later, she found out that if she had not, she could have been fined something like $75,000. That's the way it should be for people who are in postpartum depression, and no one helps them. How can her husband not have known after three children, that she felt differently?? When she was asking for help? If nobody else. But she even contacted other people.

I don't think I'm saying that she shouldn't be held accountable. What I'm saying is a lot of other people should be being held accountable, along with her. And let's stop it happening anymore. It seems so avoidable. Stop acting like women are hysterical.

Seagrass, I am very sorry about your brother. The medications for some psychiatric conditions can have some intolerable side effects and patients can find them tough to remain taking. Or sometimes they feel better then stop taking the medication.

I have not been watching but a bit of the trial and my empathy does not come from her defense counsel. Nor is it ”toxic empathy.”

The drugs and psychiatric medications her clinicians continued to give her, often increasing the dosages, despite the woman showing signs of neurotoxicity, strongly appear to be what caused her to deteriorate, hear voices and thus kill her children, then attempt to take her own life.

Unless someone has in place a concrete plan of action, they are largely viewed as disinclined toward suicide. I think relying on that criteria can be folly.

Believe me, she is “paying.”

And if she is found to not be criminally guilty, but psychotic, I don’t understand why she would be sentenced to a lifetime of confinement in a psychiatric hospital. Chloebud?

And why, when she repeatedly told her husband, mother, others that she was thinking about harming her children, was she left alone with them?

The children would not be dead, nor the defendent crippled if she has not developed postpartum depression and then psychosis from the (serious) psyche meds. Also, notice that some/most/all of her psych doctors spent approximately 10 minutes with her. (Our health care system).

It sounds like her mental health struggles started several months after her third child was born. It would be interesting to know about her behavior prior to that. Was she functioning normally at home and at work as a labor/delivery nurse? You’d think she might have been at least somewhat familiar with postpartum issues. It does sound like she tried to get help, but the (umpteen?) drugs made it worse.

I heard people say that she was a loving and conscientous mother. There are photos of her with her children in which she truly appears happy, relaxed and content.

Yes, she would know about postpartum depression. But when someone is experiencing psychiatric illness, I’m going to guess that it could well impair their assessment and judgement on things.

“””A horrible thing happens, there must be punishment.”””

As for proving something like psychosis or mental collapse, true, that may not be possible in the direct, clearcut way we’d find satisfying.

By the same token, was there any way for a muliple times great aunt in Salem to prove she was not a witch? (She was hanged. Murdered.)